Hunger
by The Wunn
Summary: POSTGAME, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. After the Manhattan incident, Dana wakes up in the morgue to discover she's...not quite the woman she used to be. -Disregards Prototype 2
1. The Morgue

**A/N:** Postgame, there will be spoilers. Requires knowledge of Prototype to understand. Rated M for language and violence (later).

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Prototype. All characters and settings belong to Activision.

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In a small morgue somewhere on the island of Manhattan, Dr. Bradley Ragland stood over an infected corpse, looking over its hideous red growths with a mild sense of disgust. He muttered something about the time of death into a small microphone before setting to work.

He picked up a small scalpel from a silver tray nearby, and pushed it into the top of the corpse's chest. Expertly, he slid it down the torso, exposing a set of horribly mutated internal organs. He sighed inwardly. Elizabeth Greene may have been dead, but her twisted legacy remained in these...things. Carefully, he clipped the skin back and pushed an empty syringe into the creature's heart. Taking a sample of blood, he let a drop of it fall onto a glass slide and began examining it under a microscope.

After a short amount of time, he heard the sound of footsteps. He turned around and saw Alex Mercer crouched on a window behind him, holding a silver Nokia phone.

"You rang?" Alex asked, with a hint of dry humour in his voice. The doctor gestured toward a nearby door. Alex jumped down from the window and followed Ragland.

"It's about Dana," Ragland said, opening up the door. Inside the room, Dana Mercer lay on a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV drip and a heart rate monitor.

"Do you remember when I told you that she was stable?" Ragland asked. Alex tensed and nodded, sensing that he wasn't going to like what Ragland had to say.

"Well," he continued, "I was wrong." Alex looked at him, visibly distressed. His sister was the only person he could fully trust.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked, trying to keep his inner panic under control. The doctor frowned. He could see the fear in Alex's eyes. It seemed quite foreign.

"While you where gone, I performed some tests. It seems that Dana's body is undergoing rapid cellular degeneration." The doctor shook his head. "If it isn't halted, her body will begin shutting down to preserve her vital organs. Within a week, she'll be dead."

Alex turned away, hoping the good doctor wouldn't see his reaction. Trying to stay calm, he replied.

"Is there a way to stop it?" Ragland hesitated.

"Well..." Alex turned to see the doctor holding an empty syringe. "Yes."

Instinctively, Alex stepped between Ragland and Dana. "No!" he shouted angrily. "You're not making her...like me!" Ragland slammed his fist onto a nearby table.

"Dammit, Alex!" he yelled back. "This is Dana's one shot at survival. Are you going to throw her life away? Will you watch her die, knowing you could have saved her?" Alex growled in anger. That was the clinch-point. He might not have wanted it, but if it was the only way to save Dana, he had no choice.

"Fine," he said, his voice low and dangerous. Ragland pulled his sleeve back, and without bothering to scrub the site, pushed the needle into his arm and drew out a small amount of black, red-streaked liquid. Quickly, he jogged over to his microscope and began examining the sample.

"The virus seems to be linked to your genetic code," Ragland explained, not looking up from the lenses. "That's why the virus takes your body as its base form."

"So what does that mean for us?" Alex growled. Ragland took a small vial of red liquid from a rack. It was marked, "MERCER, Dana A."

"We need to alter it. Otherwise, we won't have you and Dana; we'll just have two of you." Ragland placed the virus into a centrifuge and set it to several minutes.

"So, did you test this theory?" Alex inquired. "Or are we running blind?" Ragland shrugged."I've done a few tests, but the samples degenerated too quickly, and your genetic traits were too dominant, to get a stable result. It's an educated guess at best."

After a while, the machine stopped spinning and begun to beep. Ragland removed the virus, now fully black. Carefully, he poured some of it into Dana's DNA sample, and allowed it time to consume the liquid. When it finished, the new mixture was a grey substance, again with red streaks. Ragland nodded and mounted the liquid into a syringe.

"Well, the longer we delay, the less time Dana has..." Ragland muttered. He and Alex walked back into Dana's ward and stood by her bedside. Ragland scrubbed her forearm with alcohol and pushed the needle into it, releasing its contents into her body.

"And now?" Alex inquired.

"We wait," Ragland replied.

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So? What did you think? Please review, more chapters to come.


	2. Awakening

**Author's Note: **This chapter will contain graphic violence. Don't say I didn't warn you!

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It took several hours for the virus to have any effect, and Ragland and Alex sat, waiting, for the entire time. The first effect the virus had on her, however, was quite dramatic-it stopped her heart. Alex started forward, a shocked expression on his face, but Ragland held him back.

"It'll take some time for the virus to replicate her vital organs. If we try and help her, we'll probably end up doing more harm than good." Alex put his head down and sat back in his chair, his hood blanketing his face in shadow. Shifting his eyes into the infected range, he could see a slowly-expanding area of white, orange and yellow, beginning at the injection zone, and extending to a little past her heart. Though he couldn't make out detail very well in Infected Vision, he saw Ragland get up and move toward Dana. Shifting the view back to normal, he saw him switch off the heart rate monitor and take the sensor off.

"That won't be too useful anymore," he remarked, before pulling the plug on the IV as well. He turned to Alex before continuing. "Considering your...diet...this won't help her either."

Alex nodded slowly. He wasn't quite sure how his sister would take to having to consume people to survive. Probably not well.

After another few tense hours, which Ragland had whittled away by slowly spinning his office chair, Alex switched back to the Infected Vision. Dana's body was more or less completely white. He switched out, stood up, and walked over to her bed. As if sensing his proximity, a wave of tentacles passed down her body, and her body shifted from her, to a mass of tentacles shaped like her, and then back to her again. Alex put his hand on hers. "Dana..." he half-whispered. Seemingly reacting to his touch, her fingers began to move slightly. He removed his hand, and her face twitched slightly.

"Doc," Alex said, "I think she's waking up." Ragland stopped rotating his chair and moved closer to the bed.

Dana's first movement was to clap her hands to her forehead and scream in pain as her memories flooded her mind, drowning out all sensory information. Alex recognised it as the same thing that had plagued him, only much worse. Dana rolled off the bed, landing on all fours on the ground. Slowly, and hampered by the intense pain, she hauled herself to her feet and looked around a little. Her half-finished mind began to race as she noticed the door. _Door. Exit. Escape. Freedom. _Still incapable of complex thought, she began to shamble toward it. Ragland, having noticed where she was heading, ran to her and grabbed her arm.

"Dana, wait!" Dana's response to this was to shove him away. Hard. Ragland came off his feet and his back smashed into a wall, cracking the tiles. And likely, one of his ribs.

During all this, Alex stood in a state of shock, struggling to comprehend what the hell had just happened. With great effort, Ragland got to his feet, clutching his side.

"Go! I'm an MD, I can look after myself! Find Dana!" Galvanised into action, Alex ran out of the room and jumped out of the open window across from him. Dana was nowhere to be found.

About a street away, Dana's gait had gone from a shamble to a hunched-over walk. The pain in her head had faded to a dull throbbing; allowing her to think straight, but now she had another problem: a new, voracious appetite. She would look at everyone on the street, and her mind would only associate them with one word. _Food._ She'd managed to keep it under control, but she didn't know how long she could last. While she was pondering this, a man in an expensive business suit shoved her away.

"Get out of my way! Humph. Women. Should just stay in the kitchen, if you ask me..." Dana's mind raced once more.

_Food.  
_No!  
_You know you want it.  
_I'm hungry, but not THAT much!  
_Are you really? You know you can't fight it...  
_Just watch me!

At that moment, her hunger seemed to amplify tenfold. Her body seemed to cry out to her. _EAT HIM!_ Unable to resist any longer, she placed her hand on his shoulder and drove her fist through his stomach. Gore sprayed from the hole in his chest, and with his spine severed, the man dropped to the ground. Dana thought the nightmare was over, but she was horrified to discover that she was wrong, as four tentacles sprouted from her back. The new growths snaked forward and impaled the dying man, dragging him toward her.

_No, no, no, this can't be happening!_ As the corpse drew ever closer, a mass of smaller tentacles extended from her chest, breaking the body down into small chunks and swallowing them. Eventually, the only thing that remained of the body was a pool of blood and a shocked Dana. She prayed to whatever god she still could that it was over. She was shown no mercy as her head was hit with another blast of pain. It wasn't as severe, and it ended quickly, but when she recovered, her mind was playing out the man's death-_from his perspective._ Alex's voice flashed through Dana's mind. _The people I've killed...they're in me. They are me._ At the time, Dana had had no idea what he was talking about. Now, she had an answer. The only problem was the further questions it raised, like how the fuck it had happened to her.

While she was pondering this, a random person pointed at her and yelled, "Freak! Everybody run!" Almost unthinkingly, Dana took off at a run, not even pausing as she went up the side of a building. Now that she had seen herself tear a man apart, it would take quite a lot to surprise her.

Alex ran along the street, his eyes constantly scanning for Dana. To his surprise, he saw a frightened mob coming at him from the other end. One of them stopped and yelled, "Run, man! Some crazy bitch just fuckin' tore some guy apart and ATE HIM!" All of Alex's hopes were dispelled upon hearing those words.

_No..._Without bothering to be inconspicuous, he charged off down the street.

"DANA!" Eventually, Alex stopped at a blood puddle. He recognised it as a definite consumption. Quickly, he switched over to Infected Vision, and noticed a trail of infected blood leading up the side of a building and in a familiar direction. Alex braced himself and sprinted away, hoping to find Dana in the one place he knew to look. The Safe House.

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**Author's Other Note: **Well, I said it would be graphic. Again, more chapters to come. Reviews are very welcome.


	3. Tension

Alex wasted no time heading south, toward the "borrowed" apartment that he and Dana now called home. When he reached it, he bypassed the door, instead choosing to use the hole that a Leader Hunter had left in the wall. Once he entered the building, he heard the faint sound of crying, in between retches. He began to walk around experimentally, until he tracked the sound to the bathroom. Pushing the door open, he walked into the bathroom, and saw Dana vomiting black bile into the sink. She looked up and, noticing him standing behind her, shook her head slowly, cleaning off her chin with a nearby towel.

"What the hell am I, Alex?" she asked, turning around. Alex could see the tear streams running down her face.

"I'm a monster, a fucking freak!" Dana looked down in a mixture of regret and shame.

"And now I'm even a murderer. I'm-" Alex's gaze never shifted as he cut across her.

"You're my sister." Dana looked up once more.

"Alex..." she said, not knowing what else to say.

"No matter what you do, no matter what you become, you're still my sister," he continued, without a trace of anger or distrust."And I'm always going to protect you, to forgive you, because that's exactly what you did for me."

Without saying anything, Dana threw her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. And after a few tense seconds, he reciprocated. After a while, they let go of each other.

"What about the hunger?" she asked tentatively. "That fucking feeling...it drove me to kill somebody in cold blood!" Alex put his hand on her shoulder.

"It never really goes away. It's always there, in the back of your mind. You just have to try and suppress it for as long as you can." A brief moment of fear flashed across Dana's eyes.

"For as long as you can?" She asked nervously. "What do you mean?" Alex was silent for several seconds.

"For you, it was one person. For me..." His voice trailed off into nothing.

"That's why I'll teach you self-control. Hell, I'm gonna teach you everything. Everything I can do." He slammed the side of his fist into his palm. "I'm not letting Blackwatch or the Infected come within a mile of you. One will try to dissect you; the other will try and turn you into another Greene." Dana nodded her head.

"Okay. Let's do it."

A few minutes later, Alex and Dana stood on the rooftop of the apartment, overlooking the drop. Alex turned to Dana, looking quite unused to the role of mentor.

"Right, um..." His eyes darted back and forth. "Well, you just kinda brace yourself and...well, just step off." Dana crossed her arms.

"Right. Now how do I do that without breaking my legs?" Alex realised he'd been a little vague and explained further.

"Well, just shift biomass into your legs." Dana looked at him quizzically.

"Meaning what, exactly?" she asked. Alex mentally kicked himself.

"Remember that guy you consumed? His mass should still be inside you, and you can shift it around. Just focus on moving it into your legs. And see if you can't shut off your pain receptors as well." Dana paced around the drop, looking quite nervous.

"Okay, I can do this. Just shift that guy's...stuff into my legs. Here goes nothing..." With that, Dana stepped off the building. Panicking, she tried desperately to brace her legs. However, she only managed half before she hit the ground with a sickening crunch. A sharp snapping sound told her that her leg had indeed broken, and she collapsed to the ground. Another loud thud informed her that Alex had arrived.

Alex ran over to Dana's side, reminding himself over and over that her injuries could be healed quickly. When he saw her leg, however, he almost lost his mind.

"Dana! Your leg...I'm sorry! I thought..." Dana waved her hand.

"It's all right, Alex. The pain thingy worked, I can't feel a thing. How do we fix it?" Alex hesitated before speaking.

"Well...You have to consume somebody else." A look of horror flashed across Dana's face.

"No," she said firmly. "If that's how it has to be, I'm waiting this fucker out." Alex's expression changed from worry to annoyance.

"Dana, you don't have a choice." She simply crossed her arms and looked at him stubbornly.

"Oh yeah?" she asked sarcastically. "Who died and put you in charge? I'm not killing another person, and that's final." Alex felt rage boil up inside him, but he managed to hold it in.

"Right. You won't." Before Dana could stop him, he grabbed a person from the crowd, shifted his arm into a blade and slit the man's throat. Dana watched in horror as the man's lifeblood trickled away, and as much as she tried to resist, she felt the tentacles sprout from her back once more. As they tore his body apart, she felt her leg repair itself. And once she was able to stand up, she stormed back toward the apartment.

"Where are you going?" Alex called after her. Having reached the ground-floor door, she turned around.

"You can go consume anyone you fucking want!" she shouted at him. "Just leave me out of it!" Alex couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Do you want to die of starvation? You can't survive on anything else!" he shouted at her, approaching the door.

"Maybe I do!" she replied angrily. "I'm already a fucking abomination!" With that, she slammed the door in his face and walked upstairs. Once she reached the apartment, she collapsed onto the couch. She hadn't realised how tired she was, and within a few seconds, she was asleep.

While she was out, odd voices began ringing through her head. Voices that barely even sounded like speech. Definitely not like proper English.

"_Big sister angry at big brother. Maybe she help us?"  
_"_Find big sister. Bring back. She help kill Bad People."  
_"_What about big brother?"  
_"_He helped Bad People kill Mother. We kill him."_

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**Atuhor's Nose: **God, it killed me to have to warp the English language like that. Please leave a review. Good or bad.


	4. Assault

After the incident with the voices, Dana, still asleep, tossed and turned the entire night. Even as biomass flowed down her arms, transforming them into something else. By the time she woke up, she was lying on the ground and the couch was shredded. Sluggishly, she began to think about how it could have happened.

_Could've been the cat...wait, we don't have one. Well, my birthday's coming up, could ask Alex...oh yeah, fuck, yesterday..._ Dana ran over the fight in her head and realised that Alex wasn't the only one in the wrong. He might have forced her to eat somebody, but she knew he had her best interests at heart. Which was still better than anything she could say about the old Alex.

_Well, I'll apologise if he does...wait, what the fuck? _Dana looked down her arms in a state of shock. They were fully covered in a grey, smooth substance. It looked like a liquid but felt solid.

_I-is that really...me?_ The most remarkable aspect about her new arms were the hands. Gone were her ordinary fingers, replaced by two long, relatively thick claws, with another replacing her thumb. They weren't knifelike, as Alex's were, instead beginning thick at the bottom and tapering to a sharp point. Because of that, they seemed more suited for grabbing and tearing, like an eagle's talons. Dana decided that that was how she would refer to them from now on.

"Looks like you did one over on the furniture," Alex said, moving out of the shadows. Dana nearly had a heart attack.

"Alex! Jesus, don't do that..." Dana hauled herself up, perforating the table in the process. Trying to ignore it, she went on.

"How long have you been standing there?" she asked. She tried crossing her arms, but stopped midway. Alex shrugged.

"I came about an hour after you left." He took a step forward. "I wanted to apologise, but you were asleep, so..." Dana waved her talon, cutting him off.

"It's alright. I know you wanted to help, but I just...I need some time to adjust, y'know? I can't just go from being normal to slaughtering people overnight." She held up her new weapons. "These aren't exactly inconspicuous either. How do you, uh...?"

"It's easy," Alex replied nonchalantly. "Just focus on your normal arms and they should follow." Dana focussed hard, and after a few attempts, managed to shift her arms back to normal.

"Good. Now, I think we should test those new claw...things." Alex said, smiling. "And I know just the place."

Within a few minutes, the two of them were tailing a pair of soldiers. Alex turned to Dana.

"Normally, consuming someone is slow, loud, and obvious," he said, matter-of-factly. "But it doesn't have to be. If you focus hard enough, you can change into the person you're consuming, while you're doing it. Watch this."

Having said that, Alex quietly strolled up to the rear soldier and casually tore his throat open. Taking the man's gun, Alex's transformation was complete before anyone even noticed. Dana threw up in her mouth a little, but had to admire his speed. Imitating his quiet movements, she moved up behind the other soldier, but decided to do something a little different. Morphing one of her fingers into a talon, she drove it through the back of his neck and up into his brain, killing him instantly. As she stepped forward, the tendrils immediately broke down his body, bestowing it on her.

"It never gets any easier," she sighed.

After searching the soldiers' memories, Alex and Dana managed to locate and sneak into the courtyard of a nearby military base. Following the plan that she and Alex had rehearsed, Dana immediately pointed at a nearby soldier.

"That's him! Mercer's fucking here!" she yelled. All the other soldiers pointed their weapons in the accused soldier's direction, Alex included. Before the man could talk them out of it, Alex raised his gun and put a bullet between his eyes. Weaving his way through the crowd, Alex located the base's commander and deftly consumed him. Inputting the base's key code, he and Dana quietly walked inside. Leaning close to her, he whispered in her ear.

"Go raise hell." Removing her disguise and shifting to the talons, she charged directly into the front lines. If it were anyone else, she might have hesitated. But these people, even if it was indirect, had been responsible for her turning into the monstrosity she now was. The bullets digging themselves into her chest helped her decide as well.

Dana's first kill was a soldier who blindly rushed forward, screaming his name. She had no idea what he was trying to accomplish, and simply tore out a large chunk of his gut. As soon as he went down, another one rushed into his place, presumably to avenge him. Dana shoved her fist into his ribs, found an organ that was throbbing quickly, and crushed it in her hand. She removed the blood-soaked appendage, letting the man fall. As she stood over his body, she simply smiled and said,

"I've always been a bit of a heartbreaker."

A few minutes and buckets of gore later, Dana noticed a man in a black combat suit and gas mask calling the reinforcements. Alex had told her about them: the insidious group known as Blackwatch. Pushing her way through the crowd, she found herself standing in front of him.

"Hello, dead guy!" she shouted at him, smiling. Taking his shoulder in one hand, and his head in the other, she proceeded to snap his neck. But that wasn't enough. Pushing harder, she heard the muscles in his neck strain and snap, and it wasn't long before blood began seeping through holes where his skin had ruptured. One final jerk and the head had ripped clean from his neck. For once, she consumed someone voluntarily.

As his memories rushed through her head, oddly enough, she heard her name mentioned. Delving into his mind, she came across the man's most recent briefing.

"_Sir!"  
"At ease, sergeant. I believe you know of one Dana Mercer?"  
"ZEUS' sister, sir?"  
"We have evidence that she is infected with the same strain of the virus as her brother."  
"With all due respect, sir, how the fuck did that happen?"  
"Classified. Her codename is ERIS, and I want her on a fucking slab ASAP."  
"Eris, sir? As in, the goddess of chaos? Isn't that a little unoriginal?"  
"My secretary has a thing for Greek mythology, and she comes up with the names. Dismissed."_

Dana stood up, feeling slightly giddy. She felt even stronger than before, like she could do anything. Alex noticed.

"Dana! Focus the biomass outward! Your body can do the rest!" Dana did exactly that. Tentacles launched from all over her body, but they behaved differently than Alex's. Instead of impaling things, they latched onto things like the walls, soldiers and fuel tanks. After every tentacle was ready, Dana pulled them all back. The resulting explosion completely destroyed the base, leaving Alex and Dana standing the rubble. Dana was speechless-for a little while.

"Now that I think about it, that was brutal, horrifying, and disgusting," she said quietly. "And it was totally awesome." Alex chuckled slightly, thinking to himself.

_Y'know, anybody else would be frightened that their sister is a budding psychopath. But I'm not like everyone else._

Alex tapped Dana on the shoulder.

"Let's go home."

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**Another Author's Note: **More bloody violence. I put two references to Mittens in here, both because Mittens is awesome and everyone should read it and to pay tribute to DarkGidora for being the first to review this. :)


	5. Ambush

As the Mercer siblings walked down the long road back to the safehouse, Dana began to have cravings for destruction. The "high" she received from killing some of those responsible for her condition was satisfying, but it was nowhere near enough. Though the idea of killing innocent people was still abhorrent to her, the hunger remained, screaming for more violence, more death. Making a quick decision, she tapped Alex on the shoulder.

"Do you think we could pass by a Red Zone?" she asked tentatively. "I really need to kill something that doesn't have a wife and children." Alex smiled a little.

"I think we could spare the time." Changing direction, he sprinted up the side of a building.

"Race you there!" Dana chuckled. For a moment, it was like they were kids again, instead of rampaging monstrosities. And she was fine with that.

"Oh, you little—" she shouted, sprinting after him. Her body might have craved only destruction, but she felt elated all the same. Not everyone can say they raced someone over the Manhattan skyline at 80 miles per hour.

That happiness was dispelled when they actually reached the nearest RZ. As well as the Hunters and Infected that they expected, they were met with something else. On Blackwatch's side were a team of soldiers all dressed in combat armour identical to that worn by the deceased Specialist Cross. The Wisemen. From the infected, was a group of around fifteen Leader Hunters. Both sides' deadliest fighters were assembled in one place, and they were fighting distractedly, as if searching for something. Before either of the Mercers could escape, one of the Wisemen began shouting.

"Over there! It's ERIS!" His teammates all broke off from the Leaders and immediately sprinted toward Dana. The Leaders said nothing, but charged full-pelt in Alex's direction. He knew he could outrun them all, but they would quickly overrun Dana. He was quite sure that she wouldn't survive the encounter. So he stood his ground, preparing for a fight that was impossible to win.

Dana's side of the fight began smoothly, with her gutting one of the less experienced troopers. However, as soon as she faced some of the more elite soldiers, it all went to hell. When she tried to stab one, he grabbed her arm and let off a series of bullets into her stomach. Ordinarily, this wouldn't bother her, but for some reason she began gagging and retching. In desperation, she rammed her knee into the man's crotch. The protector absorbed the shock, but he took a second to look down. Which was all she ever needed. Stabbing the man in the back, Dana brought her talon downward, destroying his spinal cord. The man was completely helpless when the tentacles impaled him and tore him apart.

Dana was sent reeling from the sheer amount of classified information this man knew. It was enough to disprove half of the world's conspiracy theories, and prove the other half. But only one memory meant anything to her. She began to scan it.

"_Specialist, what was the outcome of the mission?"  
"Ragland had left the morgue by the time I had arrived. ZEUS, I believe, was in pursuit of his sister."  
"Did you find anything out of the ordinary?"  
"There were signs of struggle-cracked tiles, some blood that wasn't infected, but there was something else as well."  
"Go on."  
"Sir, there was a used centrifuge, a sample of ZEUS' strain on a microscope slide, even a vial marked with Dana Mercer's name mounted onto a syringe. They all contained DX-1118."  
"Meaning?"  
"If I may make an educated guess-Sir, I think that they infected Miss Mercer themselves."  
"Any idea why?"  
"None, sir."_

As Dana's mind re-entered the world, she struggled to comprehend the full force of what she had seen. Alex had infected her. The revelation both shocked and enraged her. How did he dare? What reason could he possibly have had to explain such a horrible act? Before she could act on her rage, however, a group of Wisemen took advantage of her shock to close in and surround her. Switching their electric batons to full power, they proceeded to fill her body with enough electricity to put Cole MacGrath to shame.

Unable to cope with the shock, Dana collapsed to the ground, her body writhing and convulsing. Somewhere close to her, she heard the sound of screaming, followed by a disembodied arm falling in front of her. Her last feeling before losing consciousness was that of being picked up roughly by something very large and then travelling down the street at high speed.

WHILE ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING...

Alex's part in the fight was not quite as smooth as Dana's. He would hack away at a Leader, then it would retreat and two would take its place, using that pounding attack he detested. Leaping up to take a breather, he saw Dana left reeling from the memories of the Specialist she had just consumed. Landing on the ground, he attempted to help her, but was prevented by a Leader latching onto his leg. The Leaders dragged him back, pinned him down, and began to unleash hell upon him, pounding his head into the concrete over and over again. At one point they reached under his back, and a sharp snapping noise and sudden paralysis informed him that they had snapped his spine. His only saving grace was that they eventually noticed that the Wisemen had overpowered Dana. Ending the beating, the Hunters crossed over to the Wisemen and began tossing them around like ragdolls. One of them had his arms ripped off and left on the ground. After they had retreated, one of the Leader Hunters picked Dana up, none too gently, and ran off with her. Alex wanted to charge off and rip the Leaders to shreds, but was hampered in this by his lack of a working spine. About thirty seconds later, the Wisemen returned. One of them, presumably Cross' successor, looked Alex over, before turning to his men.

"ZEUS is out. Pass me the killswitch." One of the men handed the Specialist an odd device with four sharp, curved points. He affixed it to Alex's back, watching it clamp down into his flesh. Alex would have a very hard time getting out of it without tearing his spine out of his body. The Specialist stood back.

"Testing in three...two...one..." With that, he pressed a small handheld button, and Alex's world was filled with pain. It wasn't something he could describe; it was just pure, refined, pain. Despite his best efforts to endure it, Alex felt himself give out a small whimper before everything faded to blackness.

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**Return of the Author's Note: **Before writing this, I debated with myself over whether to make Blackwatch or the Infected the primary antagonists. I ended up deciding on both.


	6. Deception

Alex awoke in a small, empty room under the glow of a spotlight. He recognised it as a similar room to Elizabeth Greene's holding cell at GENTEK. From a loudspeaker in the corner, an obviously-altered voice boomed out.

"Mr. Mercer. So you've finally come to." Alex growled in anger.

"Yeah, thanks a lot Captain Obvious. Where the fuck am I?"

"You're at Red Crown. And if you think of trying to escape, remember that we left the killswitch in your back." Alex dropped on his hands and knees as another blast of pain shot through his body.

"That was just a taster. We do not fuck around, Mr. Mercer." Alex found himself gasping for air when they switched the killswitch off. He looked up, eyes filled with resentment.

"Who the hell are you, anyway?" Alex asked angrily.

"I'm in charge of the operations in Manhattan now. Thanks to you, the old general had to go on an early retirement." Alex's mind flashed back to his killing of General Randall. _I've stopped this damn thing before. Stopped it dead._

"Well, what the fuck do you want with me?" Alex inquired, his anger beginning to simmer.

"The Core Hive," the voice replied. "We need your help destroying it."Alex crossed his arms, disbelieving.

"I know your methods. Why not try one of those massive tanks, or a tactical nuke?" The voice's next words sent Alex reeling.

"We believe your sister is inside, and working with the Infected." Regaining his composure somewhat, Alex replied.

"So you want me to work with you for the express purpose of killing my sister. Here's a thought for you: Go to hell!" Alex then found himself screaming in pain as the man on the other end hit the killswitch again.

"Mr. Mercer, if you don't help us, we will nuke the hive. You have an option to get your sister back, and we can make it happen, but you need to work with us." Alex found himself having to make the worst kind of decision: side with his mortal enemies, or let his sister die. Hanging his head, Alex replied quietly.

"OK. I'll fucking play ball. Just don't kill Dana."

While Alex was parleying with the Blackwatch general, Dana began to stir in completely different surroundings. Where Alex's location was dark, hers was well-lit; while his was cold and lifeless, hers throbbed with biomass. Yet it still inspired the same feeling of entrapment. As Dana tried to get up, her mind was hit with a flurry of voices that nearly knocked over again. Yet they all had the same general context.

"_Big sister is awake." _While the voices kept ringing, Dana saw several Leader Hunters emerge from the darkness. Her eyes wide, she began to step back, even as they moved closer. Another set of voices rang out in her head.

"_Why is big sister scared? We protect her from Bad People."  
"Maybe big brother wants to hurt her. We stop him too. Like before."_

At that moment, Dana had a small epiphany. _A-are they trying to talk...to me?_ Experimentally, Dana tried to speak to them telepathically.

"_Do any of you know where I am?" _The Leaders all responded with the same word.

"_Home." _Dana raised an eyebrow.

"_And where is home?_" she inquired dryly. The Leaders were quite confused by this.

"_Home is home," _they replied unhelpfully. Dana had an idea.

"_What do the Bad People call it?" _Dana asked, using the Infected parlance.

"_Bad people call it the Core Hive," _they answered. Dana folded her arms.

"_I see," _she said, somewhat warily. "_And why have you brought me here?" _The Leaders were silent for several seconds.

"_Big brother working with Bad People. Trying to kill us." _Dana felt rage boiling up inside her for the second time that day. First Alex had infected the city. Then he had infected her. Now he was allying himself with the people who wanted them dead?

"_Well, bring it on Bro,"_ Dana thought to herself._ "I've got my own army right here."_

And with that, every Infected creature in the building let out a roar of approval.

A few hours after the parallel explanations, Alex found himself in a Blackwatch chopper, an uneasy truce the only thing stopping him and the Wisemen across from him from tearing each other apart. It was an odd sensation for all of the Wisemen, knowing that they were in the presence of a man who had slaughtered millions, with neither of them doing anything. Alex's only odd feeling was that he wasn't flying the chopper. As they flew near the core hive, surprisingly, no hydras emerged from the ground, no hunters made futile attempts to attack, and no walkers tried to swarm the chopper. The only thing out of the ordinary was the pale, thin young woman in a hoodie standing outside the hive. As soon as Alex saw her, he unbuckled his seatbelt and leapt out of the chopper, not pausing to put on a parachute.

As soon as Alex landed, he began sprinting toward Dana, but stopped when he saw her expression. She wasn't happy to see him, in fact, she looked furious.

"Blackwatch, Alex?" she asked, crossing her arms. "Seriously?" Alex put out his hand defensively.

"Dana, I can explain—" Dana morphed her arms into talons, cutting him off.

"Oh?" she asked, sarcastically exaggerating her movements. "Can you, now? How about turning me into a fucking monster, Alex? Can you explain THAT?" Tapping into the hive mind, Dana found some images of Alex's armour and copied it onto her form.

"I don't know who you think you are, but you're no brother of mine!" Alex heard her next shout both vocally and telepathically. It made her sound like Greene.

"_GET THEM!" _she screamed, and within a few seconds, hell was unleashed. Infected citizens poured from every alleyway, Hunters and Leaders came out of the Core Hive in droves, and Hydras sprang up from the ground. Dana took advantage of the chaos to slip back inside the Core hive. However, at that precise moment, the Blackwatch cavalry arrived. Choppers, Wisemen, Supersoldiers and tanks, all going flat-out toward the Infected. Alex heard one of the Wisemen call out to him.

"Mercer! We'll keep ERIS' goons off you! You get inside and deal with her!" Alex nodded confirmation before sprinting inside the Core hive, punctuated by explosions. The hive's interior was exactly as Alex remembered-infected from top to bottom. Dana stood on a catwalk above.

"You think it's that easy, Alex?" Dana asked rhetorically. "You think you can just waltz on over and expect me to forgive you? Well it doesn't work like that. You destroyed my life, now I'm gonna destroy yours!" With that, Dana bullet-dove into the ground.

"Let's get dangerous!"

* * *

**Revenge of the Author's Note: **This idea went through my head multiple times before I was happy with it. Again, reviewing this story will enrich your life, so please do it!


	7. Betrayal

Alex braced himself, armour flowing across his skin and hardening. This would be a hard fight for him. He didn't want it, but if it would make Dana come to her senses, then it was necessary.

"I don't want to hurt you, Dana, but I will if I have to!" he shouted, morphing his arm into a blade. Dana shook her head.

"You've already hurt me, Alex," she said quietly. "More than you can imagine..." Dana sprinted up to Alex and tried to tear into him with her talons. Alex's superhuman speed was the only thing that saved him from a crippling injury. As he leapt away, he became conscious of a large hunk of flesh missing from his gut. Biomass crept over the injury, knitting his skin back together. Wasting no time, Alex held his blade high above his head, before swinging it in a deadly arc towards Dana. Missing her by barely an inch, the shockwave nonetheless sent her flying into the wall. After a few seconds, she stood up, coughing.

"I'm the good guy here, Alex!" she shouted at him. "You and your new friends can go fuck yourselves!" Dana decided to try something new. Shifting biomass into one of her arms, the thing that resulted was like Alex's blade, except longer, thinner, and sharper. _Well,_ she thought to herself, _they always say katanas are just better._ Darting up to Alex, she quickly unleashed a flurry of attacks into his torso. Any normal person would have been dead very quickly, however, Alex was far from normal. Still, neither was Dana, and Alex found himself forced to his knees.

Curling her fingers into a fist, additionally augmented by the rocklike armour, Dana let fly with a high-powered right cross that tore a significant portion of Alex's faceplate from its backing. Dana didn't even flinch when she saw the disgusting, writhing mass of flesh and tendrils underneath. Pulling her arms back, Dana focussed most of her biomass around them. Alex saw what was going to happen a few seconds before it did, and let off a small whimper of fear. Dana's armour morphed back to normal, and she smiled coldly at Alex.

"Sorry it had to play out like this," she said, half-sincerely. "Goodbye, Alex." With that, she unleashed a full-powered Critical Pain devastator, directly into Alex's chest. She was somewhat glad that the sound of the writhing tentacles helped drown out her brother's howls of pain.

When she eventually stopped, Alex's body lay on the floor, with one arm and most of his torso torn from his body. Alex would have been bleeding profusely, but he no longer had a heart to make the blood flow. Dana turned and began to walk away. There was no triumph in her heart, no sense of accomplishment-in fact, all she felt was the sensation of a void inside her. She had just snuffed out the last remnant of her brother, and the only real family she had left. Or at least, that's what she thought, until a large blade slipped in between her ribs and out of her chest. Alex leaned close to her, most of his body beginning to knit itself back together. Putting his head on her shoulder, he whispered in her ear.

"I think that'll be enough, Dana." Unceremoniously, Alex morphed his arm back to normal, letting her drop. Unable to contain his rage any longer, Alex began to yell at her.

"You think this is _easy? _Huh? I see my sister working hand in hand with a blight I helped create?" Alex began to reach levels of blind fury not seen since he chased Ian Taggart halfway across Manhattan.

"THE ONLY REASON I JOINED THESE FUCKING PSYCHOS WAS TO FIND _YOU!" _Alex screamed, releasing every bit of rage he had bottled up._ "_YOU ARE THE ONLY FUCKING THING THAT HAS EVER MEANT ANYTHING TO ME! AND HOW DO YOU REPAY ME?" Alex pointed his blade in her face, looking quite deranged. "YOU TRY TO KILL ME!" Dana, in spite of herself, looked both terrified and close to tears. Alex breathed deeply for a few seconds, before continuing on quietly.

"And the only reason I infected you was because you were about to die. I just...I couldn't handle it." Dana looked Alex in the face, finding it difficult to comprehend what he was saying. Tears began to fall from Alex's eyes, and he made no attempt to hide them.

"Everything I've ever done, I've done for you. Even the bad stuff." With that, Alex turned toward the exit of the core hive and began to walk away. However, when he was halfway there, he was hit by another blast of controlled pain. This one didn't stop; however, it just kept going. Falling to the ground, Alex began to spasm and convulse, in a futile attempt to lessen the pain. Dana tried to drag herself over, to do anything that could help him, but the impalement had left her too weak. Eventually, Alex just let his head drop and his world went black.

Emerging from the doorway, a group of Blackwatch troopers marched into the room, their leader holding down a small button. Surrounding Alex's corpse, one of them nudged him with his boot. The leader pulled out his rifle, replacing its clip with a red-coloured one.

"Switch to Bloodtox rounds," he stated flatly. His men followed suit, then pointed their guns at Alex's head and chest. The commander gave a small signal, and the men began pumping bullets into Alex's body. Dana tried to drag herself forward again, but that only drew attention to her. As the men crowded around her, the commander simply said, "Her too." Dana raised her arm in a futile effort to defend herself, but before they could fire, they heard a loud roar.

An army of Hunters burst through the door and began to tear them apart, ensuring no harm could come to Dana. Once they were all dead, Dana beckoned a Hunter over to her and consumed it, allowing her to stand up. As she moved closer to Alex, a group of Infected began to swarm around him. Dana waved them away, and picked up the commander's button, flicking a small switch on the side. The killswitch powered down and disengaged itself from Alex. She began to shake him.

"Alex! Wake up! C'mon, man..." After a few minutes of hopelessness, Dana was struck with an idea. Carefully, she allowed one of her tendrils to snake down her arm and impale Alex. Through it, she began to inject him with biomass, but before she could finish, a Leader tackled her into the wall.

"_Big sister bad."  
"She help big brother."  
"Needs to die."_

Dana screamed in pain as the Leader sank its teeth into her neck, preparing to consume her. However, before she could finish, the monstrosity screamed in pain. Dana wondered why, until she saw a fist come over the top and plunge into the second mouth on top of its head. The creature fell, revealing Alex standing behind it. His next words, spoken telepathically and used before, showed her a series of events from Alex's perspective.

"_No matter what you do," _She saw herself siccing the Infected on Alex.  
_"No matter what you become," _She saw herself in full armour and bio-katana, impossible to describe as human.  
"_You're still my sister." _She saw Ragland modifying the virus with her DNA and realised he was right. They were now linked as well as any other brother and sister.  
"_And I'm always gonna protect you," _She saw Alex's futile attempt to stop the Wisemen from hurting her.  
"_To forgive you," _These words brought her back to reality, and she saw Alex extending his hand to her. She took it and got back up, finishing his sentence for him.  
"...Because that's exactly what you did for me. Thanks, Alex." This time, it was Alex who pulled her into the hug. Neither of them hesitated. After what seemed like an age, in which Alex's back-tendrils lashed out at anything near them, they let go. Alex turned around.

"Two of us versus millions of them," he said, with a straight face. "Ready?" Dana nodded, smiling.

"Let's kick ass!"

* * *

**Shameless C****ash-in By The Directors Of The Author's Note: **Yeah, I got some minor writer's block, and it was hard to strike a balance between talky-talky and fighty-fighty. Reviewing this has no side-effects, so what can happen?


	8. Payback

Dana's gleeful remark was likely the most accurate way to describe what happened next. Charging into the fray, Alex's blade allowed him to slice and dismember with raging brutality, complemented by Dana's katana, which granted her attacks speed and lethal efficiency. As they dispatched large crowds with ease, more and more Infected forces streamed through the door. It seemed that for every walker they dispatched, several more took its place. When the hydras and Leaders arrived in dozens, however, Dana realised that she and Alex were, to use the proper term, well and truly fucked. They wouldn't go down without a fight, however, and it took quite a while for the Infected to gain the upper hand. However, after they had torn off one of Alex's arms and mangled Dana's katana, victory seemed almost absolute. Overwhelming the pair, the infected managed to get them trapped against the wall. Which was about the worst thing they could have done. Dana grinned cunningly, as if this was a part of her plan from the beginning.

_You shouldn't back a Mercer into a wall,_ Dana thought smugly. _It's never ended well for anyone._ Quietly, Dana put the killswitch onto the wall and felt it clamp down tenaciously. Once it was ready, Dana brandished the control pad.

"Goodbye, dead people!" she screamed, pressing the small red button. The building shook. If it had vocal chords, it would likely be screaming in pain. The biomass flowing throughout contracted, snapping several support girders as if they were twigs. The structure groaned and creaked, before giving way in a torrent of smoke, debris and biomass. Almost everything in the building was crushed by the falling debris, and large hunks of it landed directly on Alex and Dana. When the dust settled, Dana hauled the concrete hunk off, the powder making her look even paler than usual. Dazed slightly, she sat up, a massive grin on her face.

"That...was...AWESOME!" she shouted, inadvertently throwing up the horns. Alex, still buried, agreed tiredly. The last time he'd slept seemed like a distant memory now. Dana began hauling pieces of concrete off him, before lifting him up onto his feet.

"Are you OK?" she asked, mainly for politeness. She knew what Alex could survive. He knew it as well, regarding his arm with disdain before beginning to grow a new one.

"It's only a flesh wound."

A little while later, Alex and Dana stood outside RED CROWN, on the roof of a skyscraper. Dana had her arms folded.

"So this guy imprisoned you, tortured you, threatened me with mini-nuclear winter, and forced you to work with him?" she asked, shaking her head. "What a dick." Switching into Blackwatch disguises, the two of them walked off the building, landing near the front gates. Nonchalantly, the pair strolled into the base, which, for a military complex, had surprisingly few viral detectors. As they walked, they eventually noticed a large blast door, with a keypad next to it. Alex completely ignored this, choosing instead to insert his blade into it and lever it open. Dana slipped in, and Alex followed, allowing the door to close. An inner door simply slid open, revealing several scientists looking over a disgusting sight. Bodies were laid out on autopsy tables, deathly pale and covered with black pustules. One of the scientists gasped as he noticed Alex and Dana.

"Get the fuck ou-aaaaAAAARGH!" The man's sentence turned to a cry of pain as Alex sliced him in half, consuming him. Before the other scientist could react, Dana had shoved her katana up the length of his spinal column and consumed him. The man's memories were horrifying.

"_Dammit. Looks like Mercer did his job too well. This stuff is like the Grim Reaper in liquid form."  
"He did his job, now we have to undo it. Help me get this batch into the incinerator. We'll get some more jarheads later."  
"Still though...do you really think they'll be able to control another MERCER-class?"  
"We're not paid to ask questions."_

Dana dashed to a nearby computer. Opening up the man's account, she began to access his files. Under the folder "Infected-Classes" she found four entries, marked "WALKER", "RUNNER", "MOTHER", and "MERCER". Dana clicked on the "MERCER" folder, and began to read its contents.

"_MERCER-CLASS"  
"RARITY-VERY HIGH"  
"With only two known occupants, the MERCER class is the second-rarest type of infection. Unique to Alex Mercer's privately-developed strain, the MERCERS are also the most dangerous, capable of surviving nearly anything, and becoming almost anyone."  
"RECOMMENDED ENGAGEMENT METHOD-Tactical Nuclear Strike. Multiple, if possible."  
"PROJECTS: OLYMPUS-Creation of MERCER-class D-codes. In Progress."_

Dana's jaw dropped. Alex looked even more solemn than usual. The General's voice blared over the loudspeakers.

"So, you've discovered our little secret. Your tissue samples were most helpful, Mr. Mercer. Unfortunately, we no longer have a purpose for you. Goodbye." During this, a group of Blackwatch soldiers surrounded the blast door, taking both aim and cover. They heard the sounds of fast footsteps, followed by Alex's fingers protruding from the door. Alex forced the door open, oblivious to the gunfire penetrating his chest. Picking up a Blackwatch soldier, Alex proceeded to slam him into the others, causing death and dismemberment all-round. Dana simply shrugged. She was used to that kind of thing by now. The voice, agitated, blared over the speaker once more.

"Might I remind you what I pay you for? ZEUS is here, in the building, and he's _undisguised. _Not that hard to find. MOVE IT!" These words didn't help, however, as Alex mowed down soldier after soldier. At one point, Alex decided to mix things up a little. Picking up a soldier, Alex brought him closer and tore the man's throat out with his teeth. It had taste and texture akin to a piece of gristle. Moving upstairs, he eventually saw a door marked simply, "The General". Alex motioned to Dana, and the pair of them kicked the door in. Stepping inside, they found themselves in a semi-lavish office, not dissimilar to Alex's own at GENTEK. A black leather armchair sat behind a desk, facing away from the door. A highly familiar voice emanated from behind the chair.

"Mr. Mercer..." The chair turned, revealing a middle-aged man with a white streak through his hair. "...Or should I call you Alex?" Alex's face twisted with rage.

"You...I killed you on the _Reagan_, I can do it now!" Robert Cross laughed in Alex's face before standing up, revealing a prosthetic arm.

"You seriously think that..._thing _on that carrier was me?" He gestured to the arm. "I have to admit though, he does pack a punch...well, did, anyway. Tore off my fucking arm." Cross moved around the desk before sitting on the top. The viewpoint allowed him to see Dana.

"Well, well, well! What do we have here?" Cross looked back toward Alex. "You didn't tell me your sister was so nice on the eyes, Alex!" Dana stared daggers at Cross.

"Yeah, how about you shut the fuck up," she said icily, "and don't stick your cock where it doesn't belong." Cross' face showed a look of quiet resignation. Alex snickered at Dana's response; the word "Owned" was running through his head.

"How exactly did you jump from Captain to General in this amount of time?" he asked, more than a little suspicious. Cross shrugged.

"I guess I have you to thank for that. Field promotion and all that...hell, with your body count, I'm surprised I'm not the president yet!" Cross sighed as he pulled out his stun baton.

"It's a shame I have to do this, Alex. You were a powerful ally-that's why I came up with the plan to improve the D-codes. But you're also a powerful enemy." Switching the baton from "LOW" to "HIGH", then all the way to "SECOND COLE MACGRATH", Cross traced a line in an intimidating fashion, before screwing politeness and pulling out a grenade launcher. A rapid-fire grenade launcher.

"Feel explosive wrath!" he yelled, before spraying grenades in their general direction. Alex and Dana looked at each other, and ran off in opposite directions. Cross simply spun around, raining hell in all directions. Dodging the grenades, Dana ran in close to him and began slashing with the katana in one hand, and tearing at him with a talon on the other. Cross, ignoring the pain, rammed the stunner into her gut, forcing her to the ground. Pulling an assault rifle with Bloodtox rounds out, he aimed at Dana's head, but was thrown off when Alex barrelled into him, the pair crashing onto a desk. Alex began pounding into him, but Cross retaliated with the stunner once again. Throwing the seizing Alex off the desk, Cross proceeded to pick him up and slam his back against the edge of the desk. His back gave out several cracking noises, and Cross hauled him over his shoulders.

"Goodbye, Alex Merc-" Cross never got to finish as many bullets smashed into his chest. He looked around and saw Dana holding his rifle, smoke coming from the barrel.

"Fuckin' irony..." he said, before dropping Alex and collapsing onto the desk, blood seeping from the holes and his mouth. Cross barely felt two hands on his shoulder, hauling him back up. Cross saw Alex and Dana take hold of an arm and leg and realised what they were planning. Looking up to the sky, he screamed to the heavens.

"Here I come, Liz, you sick bitch!" he shouted, before his body split in two, spraying gore over the office. As Dana consumed her half, she noticed that Alex had gotten the head.

"Aw," she said, disappointedly. "Now you get the wish!"

* * *

**Box-Office Bomb of the Author's Note: **Well, there is finally comeuppance. For everyone involved. Review if you want a sequel, or if you don't, or if you want to state your opinion.


	9. Epilogue

5 AM, A FEW DAYS LATER...

Alex and Dana sat on the edge of a skyscraper, overlooking Times Square. Neither of them bothered with hiding their tentacles, and both of their sets had begun to experimentally nibble at each other's. Dana smiled. The tentacles had initially repulsed her, but now she saw them as kind of cute, like an inquisitive pet. Alex, for his part, was quietly brooding. Dana tapped him with the back of her hand.

"C'mon!" she said, pleadingly. "You need to get out more. Visit a bar, dismember some guys, have a hell of a time, y'know?" Alex chuckled slightly.

"A little while ago you were vomiting into a sink. Now you're telling me to dismember people?" He shook his head, smiling. "How the times have changed." Dana blushed slightly.

"Well, it takes a while to adjust," she said, a little humbly. "But it's actually kinda fun, really. Not to mention tasty." Dana stood up, sliding the tentacles back into her body. Alex took her hand, and after standing up, the two looked at the blood-red sun for quite a while. Eventually, Dana turned to Alex.

"Well, come on. Let's go get someone to eat."

* * *

**Bankruptcy Of The Author's Note: **Yeah, the epilogue's short. DEAL. Sequel's up and running, though there have been delays of several months between posts. Sorry if I got your hopes up with the Story Alert. s/6767118/1/Gods_Among_Men


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